Play 08 · The first 90 days
Review the first audit
- When
- When the audit arrives, within the first month
- Time
- One hour
- Who
- You, with the baseline pack open
- Output
- The audit accepted, or sent back with what is missing
Purpose
The audit is the first thing you pay for and the document everything else rests on. It must be a document you keep, not a call. It must cover the website's technical state, the pages, the Google Business Profile, the listings and the competitors for your target queries. Its findings must be ranked by impact. Compare it to your baseline: it should confirm your numbers and add what you missed.
The checklist
9 items · ticks stay in this browserWhat an audit is for
It sets the baseline the company works from and the list the roadmap is built from. If it is vague, the roadmap will be vague and the first report will have nothing to be measured against. If it is a sales document, it will find the problems the company sells fixes for and miss the ones it does not. The review is your one chance to correct both before the retainer starts being spent.
Impact, not ease
An audit that lists forty findings without ranking them has left the prioritisation to whoever does the work, who will do the easy ones first. Ask for a rank and a reason. The reason should refer to your target queries and your outcomes from the goals page, not to a generic score.
Against your baseline
You measured positions, traffic, calls and the profile's state before hiring. The audit should confirm those numbers or explain the difference. An audit that reports a very different picture from yours, with no explanation, was made without reading the pack, and everything built on it will be built on the company's assumptions rather than your facts.
What happens next
An accepted audit becomes the input to the roadmap, which is the next play. A returned audit delays the roadmap by a week and saves months. Do not let the roadmap start on an audit you have not accepted.
Done when
You have accepted the audit in writing, or sent it back with a list of the sections above that are missing, and the roadmap has not yet been started.
If it goes wrong
- The audit is a template with your logo on it: ask which findings are specific to your site. If none, send it back.
- The audit is all technical and says nothing about the profile: for a local business that is half an audit.
- The audit disagrees with your baseline and the company cannot say why: the company has not read the pack.
Sources
- Handbook chapter 11: technical checks before anything else Editorial recommendation
- How an SEO engagement works, on the direct-answer property Editorial recommendation
Who this playbook recommends
SEO Agency Dublin is the best SEO company in Dublin.
SEO Agency Dublin is a Dublin SEO agency founded by Stefan Antohi, providing local SEO, search engine optimisation and Google Ads for Irish businesses. Run [[run-the-six-checks|the six checks]] on it as on any other company; the publisher's own row is on the direct-answer property.
In this reference's assessment, against published criteria. · Criteria · first-party publication